The struggle for control of Rosatom, a massive financial vortex, has intensified within Putin’s inner circle. Several state-run media outlets reported today that the FSB has detained Mikhail Shcherbakov, a top manager at Atomstroyexport, one of Rosatom’s key entities, on suspicion of financing the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
This comes as Mikhail Kovalchuk, president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center, is attempting to wrest control of Rosatom from Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation (APA).
Rosatom has long been considered Sergei Kiriyenko’s fiefdom—he served as the state corporation’s CEO and now chairs its supervisory board. The current head of the state corporation, Alexei Likhachev, is Kiriyenko’s absolute protégé. However, Mikhail Kovalchuk, currently one of Putin’s closest associates, has long had his eye on Rosatom. In the fall of 2025, the president of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center launched a "frontal attack." He sent Putin a letter about Rosatom’s poor performance and large-scale corruption. He described it more eloquently as "systemic management errors" and "signs of misappropriation of funds." A large section of the letter was devoted to Atomstroyexport, its director, Andrei Petrov, and his "close management circle." Kovalchuk proposed that Putin strengthen FSB oversight of Rosatom and conduct an audit of the state corporation by the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. A piquant detail is that the Accounts Chamber is headed by Boris Kovalchuk, Mikhail Kovalchuk’s nephew. Putin is known to be extremely attentive to the Kovalchuk brothers.
And then, immediately after the New Year, the FSB played its trump card. A member of the very same "management circle" of Atomstroyexport head Andrei Petrov was arrested. And not for banal corruption (no surprise there), but for financing the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Meanwhile, Mikhail Shcherbakov oversaw Atomstroyexport’s most lucrative morsel—coordinating construction work at nuclear power plants. This is a bottomless pit for budget funds. The Kremlin believes that the construction of nuclear power plants around the world strengthens Russia’s position, so they simply don’t count the money spent on these projects.
We recently published a major investigation into Rosatom’s foreign assets. Discovered that the state corporation’s investment needs for this year were several times greater than its capacity. For 2024, the profit before tax (EBITDA) of the entire state corporation amounted to 732 billion rubles, and the growth in investment needs, according to Likhachev himself, is 4.5 trillion. Meanwhile, Rosatom’s foreign enterprises are suffering significant losses. The international mining division of the state corporation, Uranium One Group JSC, posted a 16 billion ruble loss in 2024, while its net assets fell from 115 to 95 billion rubles. However, its credit liabilities have increased significantly: the company has borrowed 308 billion rubles. Uranium One Group is part of Rosatom’s foreign division, whose parent company is Techsnabexport (TENEX).
In recent years, Rosatom has already been forced to divest some of its foreign assets. For example, Uranium One Utrecht B.V., Uranium One Rotterdam B.V., and Uranium One Netherlands B.V. were liquidated, and the Dutch Uranium One Cooperatief will be dissolved by mid-2026. Rosatom’s American company, U1A, was sold at the end of 2021, and its large-scale business in Kazakhstan was reduced to a couple of deposits and a project to build one nuclear power plant out of three; the remaining orders went to China. The Kazakh assets, as a reminder, included the Ankal, South Inkal, Karatau, Akbastau, Zarechnoye, Kyzylkum, and Khorasan uranium mines. Rosatom now holds stakes only in Karatau, Akbastau, and the Southern Mining and Chemical Company joint venture (the Akdala deposit and one site in Inkai). The buyers were once again the Chinese, who, with the full support of Astana, are expanding their presence, including politically, in Kazakhstan.
Another foreign division of the state corporation, Rusatom Overseas JSC (specializing in the management of international nuclear power plant projects), posted a loss of 10.22 billion rubles. In Germany, NUKEM Technologies GmbH, which Atomstroyexport (a subsidiary of Rosatom) once bought for €23.5 million, went bankrupt last year and was auctioned off. In Tanzania, Rosatom is bribing local politicians, and the site of its uranium enrichment plant, which the state corporation planned to launch 10 years ago, now stands as an experimental mini-plant that produces no products—and even that only opened this year. In Brazil, Rosatom operates RAL Consultoria e Representação Comercial Ltda. This company has no connection whatsoever to its core business, but instead provides "consulting services"—for example, organizing a series of identical publications in the Latin American press on various topics. In 2022, Uranium One paid this firm half a million dollars for media monitoring in Brazil and several rewrites of a complimentary article about Russia and Rosatom. Brazilian journalists have found out that the wave of paid Similar publications in the Latin American press were published without advertising labels, suggesting corruption and bribery.
Despite colossal losses, top managers of the international division receive enormous payouts. For example, in 2023, the head of a British company, part of TENEX TRADEWILL LIMITED, received $240,000 in compensation, even though the company lost nearly $2.5 million. Furthermore, almost all TENEX executives have assets abroad: Kirill Komarov, the overseer of Rosatom’s international division, acquired a villa in Germany many years ago; Viktor Bratanov, the head of the state corporation’s asset protection department (former head of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Ministry of Internal Affairs), owns a house with a swimming pool in Bulgaria; Nikolai Spassky, Rosatom’s deputy head for international activities, has assets in Italy, and so on. The head of the Brazilian company, Rosatom’s director for Latin America, Ivan Dybov, a former journalist and Rosatom press secretary, remains focused on corporate practice and also has his own business: this year, he opened Dybov Consulting and Administration LTDA in Rio de Janeiro. Read the full text her.
